Welcome to Notes on Travel. Let's talk about ME!

Welcome to Notes On Travel, which is intended to cover both my own family travels and other travel issues. My hope is that this will become a meeting place for travelers to swap stories and information.

I'm a forty-five year old husband and father of two daughters (six and eight years old) who doesn't get to travel as much as I did previously and would like to today. This blog is in part therapy for that part of me that would really rather be on the road.

Two things I dislike about travel writing (not to suggest that this blog rises to the level of travel writing in any real sense): not being told what things cost and not having enough information about the author. So I'll use this post to introduce my self -- or, rather, my travel-self.

My first trip was at six months when my family spent a year in Ireland while my dad was on a Fullbright exchange. From the age of eight to eleven we lived in Paris while my father directed solar energy programs for UNESCO (an agency of the United Nations). We traveled widely in Europe, while my dad traveled even more widely to Africa, Asia, and other places in which UNESCO was sponsoring projects.

My independent travel career began after college when I did a work exchange program in England and then spent five months hitchhiking around Europe -- from Greece and Turkey up to northern Denmark and down to Italy. I did the entire five months on about $2,000 -- or $400 a month!

Throughout the 1980s I traveled frequently on shorter trips, alone or with travel buddies or my girlfriend (still my girlfriend but now also my wife). I did a lot of courier flights, once leaving for Germany with five hours notices and once even flying the Concord.

In 1991 my girlfriend and I "checked out" of our jobs and settled lives and spent 5 months on a cross-country trip followed by 14 months in Asia and the South Pacific -- Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. On our return (we settled in Brooklyn, New York) I started a backpacker van line called the East Coast Explorer connecting New York, Boston, and Washington DC. I ran that for five years but although it was a fantastic experience as a business it was a flop. I managed to sell out to a national competitor that was just starting up (they lasted less than one season).

After closing up the East Coast Explorer I returned to my previous work as a freelance computer programmer. We had our two daughters and moved to a brownstone in Harlem. And here you find me now. The computer business can't hold a candle to driving backpackers around the Amish country in terms of fun, but as a living it has a lot to be said for it. Unfortunately it, and exigencies of family life (by which I mean the school vacation schedule) mean that we're lucky if we get to make two trips a year.

I've always been a budget traveler and a backpacker. I remember back in the glory days of rec.travel (an old-style internet travel site, before even Web 1.0!) a conversation between to people about the merits of the Plaza and St. Pierre hotels in New York -- two hotels that, even then, were in the $500 a night range. My contribution was

I don't have anything to say about the two hotels you're discussing, but it strikes me that one of the benefits of never spending more than $20 a night for a place to stay is that it's almost impossible to be disappointed.

I still largely feel that way, but at the same time I've definitely outgrown youth hostels. That's probably a good thing considering I snore like an oncoming train. On a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico a year ago I found myself happily spending $60 a night for rooms in some very cool hotels. On the other hand, having to pay $150 a night in Puerto Rico earlier this year was definitely a bummer! So my present travel orientation is what I'd call the "grown-up budget" level and my posts here will reflect that.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Please use the comments to introduce yourself.